SASOD launches “Defiant Bodies” to celebrate 21st anniversary

The Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD) Guyana on Tuesday launched “Defiant Bodies: Making Queer Community in the Anglophone Caribbean”, authored by Dr. Nikoli Attai as part of its 21st anniversary celebrations.
The launch was held at Herdmanston Lodge Hotel and was well attended by the diplomatic corps, elected officials, civil society advocates and the media.

A citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, Dr. Attai is an Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at Colorado State University (CSU) where he focuses on Black queer and feminist studies. Dr. Attai is also a co-manager of the CSU Collab Lab – a collaborative research hub that investigates how race, gender, and sexuality inform a sense of belonging in varied political, cultural, social, economic, and historical contexts.
Dr. Attai was motivated to write “Defiant Bodies” by his profound commitment to queer communities throughout the Caribbean and to share their stories. Dr. Attai spent time in Guyana, Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago, where he observed how queer and trans people navigated life with limited resources. He also researched transgender sex workers in these countries.
In his thought-provoking presentation, Dr. Attai drew attention to the difficult, and often violent situations, faced by queer people to promote discussion of how to resist these challenges both in the Caribbean and globally. Dr. Attai asserted that it is vital to consider the Caribbean’s colonial legacy to understand the current situation in which archaic laws continue to oppress these groups.
“It is also important to challenge the false Western perception of the Caribbean as a uniformly homophobic place where queer people are only suffering, when, in reality, there are defiant communities that are flourishing,” he said at the launch.
He further noted that queer life is thriving “beneath the radar of the mainstream public space” and across contexts that differ in terms of race, class, gender, and other socio-economic factors. Increasingly, queer communities are moving into the open by utilising different social spaces that contribute to building communities.
The launch concluded with an engaging discussion with attendees, during which Dr. Attai discussed strategies for promoting human rights for queer people in Guyana and the Caribbean.